OSAA Wrestling Championships: If you're a top wrestler, you have no social life and probably don't have a girlfriend

North Marion's Lucas Randall, aiming for his fourth OSAA wrestling title, said he doesn't have time for non-wrestling friends. Or girls (Thomas Boyd and Doug Bechtel, The Oregonian)

With OSAA State wrestling

They aren’t exactly monks, but wrestlers are a different breed from your usual high school athlete.

You are never the Big Man on Campus or the Coolest Kid in School if you spend hour after hour in a hot, sweaty room with other hot, sweaty guys.

OK, maybe at Roseburg or Hermiston there is more recognition in the hallways, but my point is, wrestlers WELCOME being left alone and being anonymous.

The really good ones, the guys who get the college scholarships, have little or no social life.

How do I know this? I asked them. I talked to Roseburg’s Reed Van Anrooy, and Culver’s Jared Kasch, and Hermiston’s Tyler Berger, and North Marion’s Lucas Randall.

All of them are champions, and unless something crazy happens at this year’s OSAA meet, they will each win another title on Saturday night.

How did they get there?

Sacrificing a lot of the "fun'' stuff that normal teenagers take for granted, things normal teenagers assume are a rite of passage.

You aren’t going to find wrestlers hanging out at the bowling alley at 2 a.m. swigging Red Bull. Or something stronger. You don't see them piled into cars at the Jack in the Box drive-through at 1 in the morning.

“My social life is wrestling, and wrestlers,’’ Randall told me after his 4A semifinal match at 145 pounds.

“I don’t hang out with many non-wrestlers unless they’re good at something else. I try not to hang out with people who are Debbie Downers and don’t have confidence in themselves. I try to hang out with people who are kind of like me, who want to succeed.’’

Not to pry, but the hours of training, and working out, and running, and competing at various tournaments would seem to preclude having a girlfriend, yes?

“No girlfriends until wrestling is over,’’ said Randall.

“Too much of a distraction. I don’t want something like that on my mind.’’

Is there a certain somebody at North Marion waiting for wrestling season to get over?

“No,’’ said Randall, who kept his game face on during our entire interview.

Kasch, the Culver standout and heavy favorite to win at 2A/1A 120 pounds, said wrestling, “is an all-week thing. The only day off I probably get is Sunday. When I come back Monday I’m running, working out, wrestling. I always say wrestling is a lifestyle, not a sport. You’ve got to dedicate a lot of time if you want to be the best.’’

Said Kasch, “During the season, if you're as dedicated as I am, you don’t really have a social life. You don’t hang out with girls. You don’t hang out with friends who don’t wrestle. You don’t really get out of the house a lot.’’

Hermiston’s Berger, the Big Man in the Bracket at 5A 138, put it this way: “There’s people around school who question why. Why am I not like them? Why am I working out every weekend? They say, ‘let’s go hang out’ and I tell them I can’t, I’ve got to practice, or go to a camp, or something. Maybe go lose weight.

“You have to exclude yourself from whatever everyone else is doing. My goals are different, probably a lot different from most of my friends. Wrestling is a lot more important to me right now and I’m going to do what I have to do to get to the top.’’

Berger doesn’t even mingle with classmates in the cafeteria.

He said he and teammate A.J. Garcia, “go straight to the workout room at lunch time to get away from the distractions of food and all that.’’

Oh man, so it’s not only girls that are a distraction, it’s food.

Van Anrooy, who manages to be a stellar athlete and also a 4.0 student at Roseburg, can relate to all of the above. “You’ve got to sacrifice some things and figure out what’s important,’’ he said. “Then you just keep the things that are important in your life.’’

Like I said, these guys are a different breed.

On a positive note to the girls at these high schools, I would say that wrestling season is almost over.